


Like a Spot in the Landscape

by Veelez (Hyela)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Insomnia, M/M, Rambling, Teacher-Student Relationship, greenstock, inappropriate relationship, kinda self-aware, unlikely situation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-09
Updated: 2013-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-28 16:28:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyela/pseuds/Veelez
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They both lived with the feeling of being mere secondary characters, perhaps even just extras, in a silly movie. And that was what gave them courage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Spot in the Landscape

**Author's Note:**

  * For [homoeroticismforthewin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/homoeroticismforthewin/gifts).



> Greenberg/Finstock  
> Rated T for inappropriate relationship between a teacher and a student. Sexual act.  
> Could be set in Canon?

_Our thoughts strayed constantly and without boundary_

_The ringing of the division bell had begun_

_Along the Long Road and on down the Causeway_

_Do they still meet there by the Cut_

~Pink Floyd, High Hopes

 

  
Bobby Finstock put some coins in the drier before starting it. He then lingered before it, watching as his clothes spun again and again in a seemingly endless cycle.  
He sighed. It was four hours in the morning, he hadn’t slept all night and he was so bored out of his mind that he had resolved to go to a Laundromat and finally do his week old laundry. That was the fourth time this happened in less than a month. What was his life?

  
He should have been too scared to go out, really. Three days ago, some girl was attacked by what she described as a raving beast (young teenager on drugs); a week before, Shelby the school nurse told him that she swore that Isaac Lahey had a gashing wound, but a few seconds later it was gone (young overworked nurse); and two more weeks before that, the police had chased a guy around town because he inexplicably broke into the new richest man of Beacon Hills’s house (young unthinking delinquent).

Beacon Hills had became that fucked up, crazy place that attracts trouble. His grandmother always tried to scare him as a child with stories about cursed towns and vile cities; ghosts and monsters haunting places that you could only notice from the corner of your eye. Of course, his grandma was also a fucked up, crazy person, but recently, he had started to think she was on to something.

Yet, here he was, out before dawn, not caring at all. Nothing happened to him on his way here. Something did happen to someone, since he heard the wail of an ambulance in the distance. Strangely, he felt sort of vindictive about it. It was not like he wanted something bad to happen to him, hell he already got his load of shittiness in life, but still... sometimes, he could feel the almost tangible emptiness around him, as him someone excluded him from the real world and put him on the side to watch. In these instances, he could guessed what the guys on the team who never played could feel.

No family worth seeing more than once a year at Christmas, no lover, no friend friendly enough to endure him more than a few hours a week at work.... Needless to say, Bobby was beginning to feel a little lonely. Just a little. He had hobbies, he had his lacrosse team, but there were definitely some holes to fill here and there, and he didn’t know where to begin. Frankly, he had this impression of being by passed by life, of letting the days go by, the time slipping between his fingers. He had no idea what to do about it. Actually, he sort of did, but it was embarrassing and he wasn’t sure if it was even legal.

Three weeks ago, he had came here to do his laundry at three o’clock, sleepless and irritated, much like he was this night. It was a Friday, so who cared, right? Besides, even if it had been a Sunday and he had to work the very next morning, it’s not like his lack of sleep would have changed anything in the lack of interest of his students.

So he came here and, who does he see? That lazy, idiotic ass of a Greenberg. Putting his own clothes in a machine. Looking like a goddamn zombie doing so. When the kid had seen him, he had looked surprised, but he hadn’t comment on it. Instead, he immediately started talking sports, school and, weirdly, art.  
At first, Bobby had been utterly annoyed and couldn’t wait to see him leave, but then the conversion grew on him. Which annoyed him even more. Who was Greenberg, clumsy, random, suckier-than-the-suckiest-player Greenberg, to go and be sympathetic to people. His job was supposed to be doing stupid shit and be blamed for it. It worked that way, and everybody liked a good scapegoat.

Despite that, the next Friday and the Friday after, when Bobby came back to the Laundromat, developing another nasty habit, he had been happy to see that Greenberg was there. Apparently, the boy was kind of an insomniac, and while he took some Ambien during the week to function in school, the weekend, he lived during the night. Bobby shared that he was sort of the same. He took sleeping pills too, but he hated the side effects (dizziness, headaches, dysphoria...) and the simple fact that he had to take pills for such a simple action as sleeping.

Of course, not taking pills meant not sleeping, and not sleeping meant having to find something else to do. Work was out of the question, at least on a Friday night. Somehow, both him and Greenberg had settled on the most boring chore ever, laundry.

Seriously, who knew he and the brat had such a synchronized, lonely existence?

Greenberg entered the Laundromat about fifteen minutes after him. He grinned at his coach, and even waved, like the dork he was.

“Stop smiling like a dumbass, Greenberg. Also, I can see you without you wiggling your arms. You’re not little,” he snorted, crossing his arms.

Greenberg shrugged sheepishly, but his smile did not falter nor did he look dejected at all. That was one of the thing he never understood about that boy. He was one positive dummy. All the insults, the pushing, the jabs; and yet Greenberg always looked mildly happy. It made him want to push him just a little bit more, just to see if he’d react. None of the kids ever reacted in his face, not really. He got smiles, fleeing gazes, shuffling feet, little protestations, but people never really got angry at him. Mostly, he thought they pitied him or something. He was a bit weird, and so they didn’t want to interact too much with him. He could see it in their eyes. Their parents were the same. The most he got was sarcastic replies from Bilinski... nah, Stilinski.

Greenberg, though? Greenberg’s goodhearted character was genuine. He really wasn’t bothered by the coach’s extravagant personality, his outbursts or his harsh words. It was like he saw right through it. Well, he was a straight-As student, after all, but even other little geniuses like Stilinski or Martin considered him with disdain. He had seen Stilinski’s look the last time he made his speech before an important game. Like, haha, Coach loves Independence Day and uses the same speech, what a strange moron. He sucked less than Greenberg on the field, but he didn’t suck less than anyone else in real life. Besides, he was involved in McCall’s shady business. Good for him.

“How is it going, coach?” asked Greenberg, dropping his huge bag of clothes next to a washing machine, “Still unsleeping?”

“You got eyes to see. Congrats.”

“Today, I skipped math to go to the museum. They had this impressionism exhibit, see? I don’t know if I mentioned it, but it’s my favourite art style. I’m pretty fond of Monet, Manet and Gogh, but they’re the popular ones too. And Van Gogh is more of a post-impressionist, really. Still, I would so paint like that if I could.”

Heh. Greenberg and his obligatory art appreciation spam of the night. His enthusiasm was enticing, though.

“I prefer nudes myself,” replied Bobby as he watched his student throw clothes in his machine and get a bottle of Tide out of his bag. He smiled to himself when Greenberg got a bit flustered, but other than that, the guy barely looked embarrassed by the statement. He even pushed it further by asking:

“Male nudes, or female nudes? Anyway, there are nudes in every art style. It’s more of a topic than a technic, see?”

Bobby rolled his eyes.

“Well, I’m no professional. I’m not Robert the fancy nudist impressionist, I’m coach Finstock, so....”

“Who could forget.”

“Don’t be insolent. And to answer your question, both. Both nudes. I mean, I never really understood why one should matter most. All the different forms, and curves and colours of people’s bodies. It’s goddamn beautiful. It doesn’t need a genre.”

Greenberg agreed, nodding his head, his smile getting wider. It wasn’t mocking though, just... appreciative. In fact, Greenberg’s philosophy seemed to be going through life accepting whatever was coming his way and finding something to appreciate in it. That was fucking creepy. People who liked everything should be distrusted.

Nevertheless, Bobby couldn’t help but like it about Greenberg. Because that meant Greenberg enabled his outspokenness. Well, okay, he was outspoken and talked too much for his own good even without Greenberg around, but the important was that Greenberg didn’t make him feel bad about it. He could just say whatever he wanted to say and react the way he wanted to react and the guy would just shrug it off without inwardly thinking his coach crazy or unpleasant. At least, Bobby didn’t think he did. Perhaps he should just ask. So he did.

“Greenberg, do you think I am insane?”

“Huh?”

“Don’t ‘Huh’ me, you slob, you heard the question. Do you think I’m crazy? Do you call me stupid nicknames behind my back with your classmates? Do you tell your parents that I’m a scary asshole?” Bobby was getting a bit worked up, but he couldn’t help it. Truth is, he always felt he had to push people around to get the attention he wanted, and to know if their attention was worth it. It didn’t take him long in life to figure out that judgmental, prissy people were not worth hiding who you were, and so he had stopped giving a fuck about his attitude. With a few exceptions. For instance, he didn’t like when McCall made him pass for a homophobe before all the students at the ball. What a smart little asshole. He had had to retreat, because he would not scream ‘Wait, I’m bisexual!’ at the crowd, giving them one more reason to talk behind his back. It wasn’t their business. Greenberg could know, because Greenberg would shrug it off.

“The scary asshole would be Mr Harris, coach.” simply answered Greenberg.

Bobby laughed at that. Yes, Adrian was asshole-ish in his best moments, and scary in his worst. Still....

“Adrian Harris, he yells at his students. I yell at my students. What’s the difference, Greenberg?”

“It’s true, you do yell,” said Greenberg, pondering it while starting the washing machine, “But to me... you’re not snide, or shifty, or cruel. You are eccentric. Harris, he really hates students. He’s like a vulture waiting for his next victim. He attacks Stiles a lot for no reason.”

“Also, he’s one of these über rational people who don’t appreciate art because it’s too subjective. And he hates sports too. Hell, I think that guy is better at hating stuff than I am.”

Greenberg smiled. “I don’t think you’re that hateful, coach. You just like to react strongly.”

“Don’t tell me what I like or not, dummy! I like to yell at stuff I dislike; I don’t do it to get attention,” lied Bobby, “You know why? Because I’m not a spoiled teenage girl someone just dumped.”

“Okay, then.” Greenberg said easily, shrugging it off yet again.

“I meant to ask you about that,” mumbled Bobby.

“About what?”

“Why are you always... you never get angry at anything I throw at you. You just take it passively. You don’t even look like a doormat doing so, you just look...” Bobby made an annoyed gesture of the hand, “Peaceful? Yeah. Whatever people say, especially me, you look at peace. What’s with that? It kinds of make you look like a Buddhist monk or a simpleton. Still not sure which.”

Greenberg had the decency to smile sheepishly and rub his neck, as if he was caught doing something wrong or weird. “Ah, well. Most of the time, if I don’t agree with what you say about me, either I don’t care or I think you must not really mean it. It just never really bother me, I guess. I don’t think I could be a Buddhist monk, because I like sex and possessing stuff, so maybe I am a simpleton.”

“I think you just suffer from constant happiness. That’s not bad, by the way. It’s just insane.”

Greenberg laughed, which made Bobby smile in turn. The guy was alright.

“So, gay sex? Or het sex?” he blurted out, making Greenberg jump. For a moment the guy looked like a deer caught in the headlights. Weird? The coach admitted to like nudes of both genders a few minutes ago. Why would Greenberg feel shy about his sexuality? “What, you said you like sex. I’m just casually asking. No need to look like I want to chop off your balls. I’m just going to assume you’re a closeted fairy, now.”

Greenberg smiled, but he looked a bit uneasy.

“That’s not it. I... I-I...I—”

“Spit it out!”

“I thought you were proposing at first?” he answered, his voice a tad shaky.

Bobby stared at his student, disbelieving. He almost looked like he wanted it to be true. Well. That would be the neat situation, wouldn’t it? Someone half his age, male and whom he verbally jabbed everyday in front of everybody. That would make a pretty scandal. And there he was, earlier, complaining that nothing interesting ever happened to him.

“Greenberg, I think I don’t even know your first name.”

“Uh, Geoffrey, but I don’t like it anyway.” the brat replied, still too shy, too red and too crisped. He looked downright constipated. Not a good look on him. At all.

“Yeah? Don’t want me to call you Jeff or Jeffy while you suck me off?” he half-joked.

Greenberg looked at him, flabbergasted. He looked as if he was hesitating between utter joy and horror. Seems like Greenberg had him on his mind for a while, now, God fucking knows why. For Bobby, it was a whole new idea.

Sleeping with a student. If he was honest with himself, and he usually was, he didn’t care if doing it was moral or not. Kids in his class and in his team weren’t actually kids anymore. He knew they were dating and fooling around. He overheard conversations and saw them devour each other’s mouth in the halls. People who said they weren’t ready were idiots. Yeah, so they weren’t committing to a lifetime relationship. So what. They were still doing it like rabbits. Why would it be wrong for him to partake in it? Okay, so he was the teacher and blah blah. That was a better reason. But then again, he and other teachers were already biased fucks and nobody ever did anything about it. The school system was fucked. Besides, it wasn’t college, Goddamnit, it was high school. Nobody cared. At least, nobody cared as far as he was concerned.

“Don’t you... herm... Aren’t you afraid to lose your job?” Greenberg asked, almost timidly, not quite yet accepting the suggestion. It was Bobby’s turn to shrug it off.

“I would care about losing my job, but... I’ll tell you what, Greenberg, I just have had enough with watching people around me living, getting somewhere in life or just having stuff happen to them. I feel like I’m a secondary character in my own life sometimes. Like a comic relief in a cheesy movie. Look at this, it’s so pathetic that I’m actually confiding this important fact to a student in a fucking Laundromat at four and something in the morning.” He took a deep breath and shook his head at himself unhappily.

Greenberg wringed his hands nervously, his eyes shifting from Bobby to the door. He didn’t look like he wanted to bolt, though. Maybe he suddenly got afraid of someone eavesdropping the conversation. Like there was another idiot ready to do his laundry at four in that place. Not with the sudden, unceasing threats haunting Beacon Hills recently.

“Hey, Greenberg,” continued Bobby, not waiting for an answer that wouldn’t come, “How come you kept coming here, at four, to do your laundry when everyone else is so panicked about the attacks and all?”

“Oh, that? I guess... when you say you feel like a secondary character in a story? Well, I feel like an unimportant detail in a painting. You know. That figure in the background no one notices. I suppose I was unconsciously seeking excitement, even if it’s of the bad kind.”

“Doesn’t make much sense.”

“I know—”

“I totally get it. I think we should get each other off. This sounds predatory and bossy. Wait. I think that, if you have no problem with it, we could get each other off. I mean, we are background characters. I doubt someone will notice. And if they do? Oh well. It’ll make things interesting for me. In jail.”

“In jail? I’ll be eighteen in a month, coach.”

Ah. Wait.

“Are you shitting me, Greenberg? You got hold back? But you’re such a know-it-all! No offense. That’s not a bad thing to be, all things considered. But you are.”  
Greenberg laughed and roamed a hand through his thick brown hair. He was gleeful, excited by the perspective of sex, which was flattering. Anything else didn’t matter. Good old Greenberg.

“Yeah, well I was a moody daydreamer. Took a lot to motivate me, when all I wanted to do was drawing. I only got better after sixth grade. Anyway, I... I’d be happy to blow you coach!”

And then, just like that, Greenberg tried to kiss him. Bobby grabbed him by the shoulders and kept him at bay, unimpressed by his student’s rather brute handling of the situation. He was not going to get blown in a Laundromat.

“Greenberg, for fuck’s sake, if we’re doing this, I’m taking you home. And I mean _my_ home, because no way I’m getting caught fooling around with you by your mother. I’ve met your mom. She’s a scary little woman. No idea how come she let you out at this hour.”

“Oh! She doesn’t know. She works at night. But... yeah, I’ll go home with you, coach.”

“Goddammit, Greenberg! You are way too trusting. Going home with older men. What’s going on in that head of yours, sometimes I don’t know.

“Err... You’re sending mix messages, coach.”

“At this point, call me Bobby.”

“Or Robert?”

“Don’t push your luck, brat!”

 

***

An hour and a few later, they were effectively at Bobby’s place. They took their time, because they had some. Bobby didn’t have anything else to do, and Greenberg’s mom wasn’t going to come home before eight, so they figured they could have some coffee first, even though the tension between them had significantly grew during the ride in he car.

  
Sitting side by side, they drank in silence, checking each other out, taking in their surroundings, letting their imagination flips through different possible scenarios, each coming one seeming more exciting than the previous.

“This less creepy than I thought,” Bobby said thoughtfully, “Not to say that this is a healthy way to hook up, but I’ve got worst. When I was younger. You should have seen the guys I brought home. Risky. Bit like you today, come to think of it. Was never really big on safety. I thought that my life was boring enough without thinking about safety and prudence.”

“Spots in a landscape, that is what we are,” Greenberg said eventually, “It’s like... we are so far off from the main thing that we desperately seek to create an... an unbalance. In the tableau. We want to attract gazes, even if it’s only our inner self’s gaze, even if it’s only for a second. We want to matter.”

“I have no idea what you just fucking said, but that’s an A for effort, Greenberg. That was non-eloquently beautiful.”

“Thanks, Bobby.”

Bobby kissed him. He hadn’t kissed anyone in a long while, only remembering drunken kisses at some teachers’s party a year ago. He doubted that Greenberg had ever kissed anyone. He was an unnoticeable fat kid. Only his coach’s daily insults and rambling made him a known figure among his classmates. Perhaps, morbidly so, Greenberg appreciated the jabs for that reason. Perhaps he became kind of a masochist from the lack of attention and then all of his teacher’s apparent contempt was attractive to him. Who knew. Bobby kissed him passionately.

They wouldn’t go to the bed. It was a place part too intimate, part too banal for a first tentative exploration of their relationship. Of course, so was the couch, but as long as they could keep their clothes on and watch TV afterwards, they could pretend that it was at least less inappropriate than it really was.

Greenberg kissed like he talked sometimes, trying to give too much at the same time, trying to communicate some lost hidden message. He did not cling, though. His hands only trembled by his side, as if he did not know what to do with them, until Bobby took them and put them on his hips. Even then, Greenberg did not cling, as though he was afraid that it would be interpreted wrongly.

Bobby hung on to Greenberg without any restraint. No one was there to watch, no one was there to judge. And since he was already doing something vaguely immoral, he thought that he had better to do than be shy about it. So he pulled Greenberg’s hair and kissed the living shit out of him, as his fucked up grandma would say. He nibbled on his lips, kissed him down his jaw before going back to the mouth, listened to the little sounds of pleasure that Greenberg couldn’t help but make.

Soon enough, Greenberg was on his knees in front of him and both their jeans were unzipped. The younger man had one hand inside his pants, the other going for Bobby’s. When presented to a man’s —somewhat impressive— penis, Bobby would have thought that his student would have faltered a bit. But no. Greenberg looked at his cock like it was a piece of art he was studying. That was kinda awkward, how intense the youngster looked suddenly. And then, after his short solemn inspection, he went right to the business.

Bobby gasped in relief, but Greenberg did not choke. It was as if the little brat had done this before. Would not be surprising. He was almost eighteen, after all, and this was the generation of boredom and experiments. And so Greenberg sucked, not like a pro, but with both enthusiasm and carefulness, enough to make it good. Being sucked by someone younger was an endearing novelty for Bobby, who at forty, wasn’t accustomed to what he would dare to qualify as ‘fresh meat’.

It didn’t last too long. Not too strangely, Greenberg came before him, showing his overexcitement and his youth in all its splendour. He came from barely masturbating, at the sight of his teacher, red in the face, staring down at him and panting, shutting up for once. Bobby came at the sight of an half-lidded Greenberg, furiously working his hand on his cock and sucking as fast as he could, very fast starting to lack technic in his hurry. It was a thing of beauty. And Greenberg swallowed, too.

Afterwards, they just sat on the couch side by side, as they were before the brief blowjob. There did not seem to be anything else to be added, but they felt both comfortable, satisfied and a bit sleepy.

“I could suck you off too,” Bobby proposed bluntly. Greenberg smiled and shook his head.

“I thought... maybe to keep some for the next time.”

There was a pause.

“Because we should do that again,” his student said. He appeared ready to defend his position, his mind so obviously searching for good arguments, even though there were none, really, except that they both wanted it to happen. It was flattering.

“We really shouldn’t Greenberg, but we still could. The braving of the forbidden, ain’t it what makes art interesting in the first place?”


End file.
